


The Dismemberment Song

by myrmidryad



Series: RIP Roswell [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Catheters, Electrocution, F/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Torture, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-consensual Medical Procedures, Rescue, Science Experiments, Temporarily Evil Liz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27265975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: Max wakes up strapped to an operating table, his powers muted. When Liz appears, he's expecting a rescue, but she's far more interested in the scientific possibilities.
Relationships: Max Evans/Liz Ortecho
Series: RIP Roswell [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990846
Comments: 11
Kudos: 22





	The Dismemberment Song

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic for this year's [RIP Roswell](https://riproswell.tumblr.com/post/627177290151903232/rest-in-peace-roswell-a-halloween-rnm-event) event! I've gone for a sort of blend of monsters and tricks.
> 
> Title from [The Dismemberment Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOb-Ha7UaEw) by Blue Kid. The song is very upbeat, very much from the Liz perspective. Since I wrote this from Max's perspective...it's not quite so upbeat. Mind the tags!

It wasn’t the first time Max had woken up restrained. That was just his life these days, and had been since Liz Ortecho had come back to Roswell and blown all their lives out of the water. Once, he’d woken up restrained in a sexy way, and that had been great. Liz had been straddling him, hair falling over her shoulders to tickle his bare chest, a pleased grin on her face as he came to and arched against her, trying to reach out for her only to be pulled up short by the ropes around his wrists.

This was not that.

His head hurt, and the first thing he registered was the brightness beyond his closed eyelids, and the hard surface he was lying on. The second was the way he couldn’t move. He was restrained by cuffs or straps or some sort of material at each of the joints of his limbs, and two more across his chest and hips. They were tight – he couldn’t move at all.

He turned his head to the side before he opened his eyes, the brightness above him too much to bear. He wasn’t on the ground, he saw with a lurch in his stomach. He was on a table. A metal table covered by a white sheet. He was in some sort of operating theatre, and for a second he wondered if this was a dream, a repressed memory from his resurrection.

But no, he knew what his dreams were like, and this was real. He twisted his head to the other side, looking around as much as he could. There were a couple of tables, and a desk in the corner opposite the closed door with an open laptop and a few stacks of papers on it. He was alone in here, in this small white room, strapped to a table like a specimen. He was even wearing some sort of surgical gown, and the thick straps around his upper thighs and just below his knees were underneath it, which was somehow worse than knowing someone had undressed him.

Whatever he’d been drugged with – because he was sure that was the source of the ache in his head and the dryness of his mouth and eyes – was wearing off, and fear was coming in stronger and stronger waves. He tugged against the restraints, and then tried to extend his awareness to the electrical appliances, trying to do _something._

Nothing happened. He reached out in his mind for Isobel and found nothing. It wasn’t like when she’d dosed herself with Liz’s killing serum and gone cold, but it was like there was a block in place. He couldn’t reach her. He tried reaching for Michael instead, not really believing anything would happen, and of course nothing did. He was alone.

Alone and restrained. If he’d been in the dark that would have been the holy trifecta of his greatest fears, but the hospital environment was just as bad. He felt like a subject pinned out on a table, awaiting vivisection. 

He couldn’t hear anything but the hum of machinery, and the whir of air coming in through a unit set into the wall. He took a deep breath, but couldn’t manage anything louder than a whispered, “Help.”

He coughed to clear his throat, twisting his head to find the door, firmly shut. “Help,” he gasped, working up his voice. “Help me! Hey! _Hey!_ Can anyone hear me?”

Footsteps, hurried ones. Max knew there was a strong chance he’d drawn out his attacker, and he was in no position to defend himself, but at least if his enemy was in the same room, he wouldn’t be alone. He waited, neck cricked at an awkward angle so he could keep his eyes on the door, and when it opened he could have shouted in relief. “Liz!”

“You’re awake!” She sighed, half-smiling, half-exasperated, and closed the door behind her. “Typical, I step out for two seconds, and that’s when you wake up. It doesn’t matter – you’re awake now, we can get started.”

“What?” Max pulled against the straps around his wrists and elbows. “Liz, let me out.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so.” She grinned and patted his chest as she swished past him, and he finally noticed that she was wearing a white coat. 

“Don’t think so? What the hell? Liz, you’re…” You’re scaring me, he wanted to say, and swallowed it down. “Let me up, come on. Something’s blocking my powers, I don’t know how I got here.”

“I know.” Liz walked round to his other side and pulled a sheet off a small trolley. “This is what’s blocking your powers.” She turned around, holding up a syringe with a clear liquid inside. “And I brought you here. Which wasn’t easy, by the way, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re a lot bigger than me.” She laughed.

Maybe this was a dream. But Max could remember going to bed with Liz the night before whenever now was. He could remember hanging out with Michael earlier in that day, and arguing with Isobel about how she was ‘helping’ Maria train her alien abilities. He wouldn’t remember that if he was dreaming.

“Liz, what’s going on?” he asked, trying to stay calm. “What happened? Last night, we went to bed, everything was normal.”

“And then I got up, gave you a shot of my new serum and a big dose of sedatives, and dragged you here.” She smiled, like nothing was wrong. “Relax. This is important.”

“Important how?”

“Scientifically.” She smiled, that little tilt to her eyebrows that always appeared when she was overwhelmed by possibilities and trying to explain it to people who weren’t on her intellectual level. People like Max. “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, y’know? I can’t believe I was just going to bed every night and lying next to one of the most important specimens this planet has ever seen. The things I can do with you, Max, you won’t even believe them.”

So if this was a dream, it was definitely a nightmare. Max took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “Liz, there’s something wrong with you. You don’t wanna do this.”

A series of expressions flickered across her face, the face Max knew better than his own. Hurt, acceptance, bitterness, resignation, spite. “Don’t I,” she said after a moment, her smile humourless now. “Shows what you know, I guess. Anyway!” She straightened and pulled on a brighter expression. “I’m wasting time. I was waiting for you to wake up – do you want a catheter, or will you tell me when you need to go so I can just get a bedpan?”

Max stared at her. “Liz, this isn’t funny.”

“Just answer the question, Max,” she said, exasperation bleeding into her voice. 

“Let me up! God, Liz, can’t you see something’s wrong? You’re…something’s gotten into your head, something’s making you do this.” Mr Jones was dead, Max _knew_ he was dead, the bastard’s heart was in his chest, so it had to be something else, but what? “Please, look – call Kyle, okay? Call Kyle, you’re scaring me.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Liz said. “Last chance – catheter or bedpan?”

“Liz!” He was breathing faster, panic clouding his mind. “Liz, come on, it’s me, you don’t wanna do this. I love you. You love me!”

Liz leaned close, a smile with just an edge of condescension playing at her mouth. “You can love someone and still want to take them apart,” she said quietly, as though she was telling him a secret. “Especially if it’s for science.” She straightened and shrugged. “Catheter it is. Don’t say I didn’t give you a choice!”

It was the catheter that convinced Max that this was really happening. He twisted as much as he could on the table, shouting for help, for Liz to stop, but she ignored him and just muttered something about him making a huge fuss. He told her she was hurting him, but she didn’t care. She was putting a _tube_ up his urethra, and she didn’t care.

“Just hold still,” she sing-songed when she was done. “God, maybe I should’ve done this while you were sedated. That’s what I get for trying to be nice, I guess.”

“Nice?” Max’s eyes were watering a bit. “What the hell, Liz? What’s wrong with you?”

“Absolutely nothing.” She shook her head and gave him a look that was almost sad. “You wouldn’t understand, Max. You never have.” She rallied herself and gave him a bright smile. “But now that’s out of the way, we can get onto the real fun.”

“Fun?” he repeated weakly. “Jesus, Liz – please, call Kyle, okay? Call…call Rosa.” He didn’t want her to contact Isobel or Michael, not while she was like this. If she’d somehow taken them too – but as soon as the possibility occurred to him, he had to know. “Liz, have you talked to Michael?”

“Not yet.” She gave him a sly look. “You know you’ve always been my favourite. I had to start with you, but yeah, I’ll get to Michael and Isobel at some point. Isobel will be interesting – you know it’s really annoying that she’s the only female alien I’ve got data on? I mean, there are so many differences between male and female humans, the differences between male and female aliens could be just as vast and I’d never know, because my sample size is _one._ Do you have any idea how frustrating that is?”

“Why are you doing this?” Max asked, fear making him stupid. All he could think of were his old childhood fears of doctors and scientists, fears that Liz had only half-dispelled while she’d been with him. He’d told her, right at the beginning, how it was the science that scared them the most. He’d said _them,_ but he’d always meant him. Being trapped like this had always been his greatest fear, not Isobel’s or Michael’s. They were scared of it, sure, but not terrified like Max.

“Lots of reasons,” Liz said calmly, turning around to read through a notebook filled with her handwriting. “But mainly because I want to, and because I need to, and because this is going to serve a greater purpose. I know you’re comfortable being this selfish, Max, but I’m not. I can’t keep pretending that I am, not that you’ve ever wanted to hear it.” She rolled her eyes and put the notebook down, getting a fresh pair of blue nitrile gloves. 

“Liz…” Max swallowed. “Please, come on. Let me up. Let me go.”

“You don’t let go of a prize specimen when it wanders into your life, Max.” Liz held up a syringe and flicked the side of it. “Now don’t squirm, alright? Dios mio, what did I _literally_ just say?” she sighed when she approached and Max started jerking against his restraints, not even really meaning to.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please, Liz, come on, don’t do this.”

“Oh don’t be such a baby!” The sensation of her gloved hand on his skin made Max flinch, but there was no escape as she expertly located a vein and slid the needle in. “This is going to be so good for us,” she said enthusiastically as she depressed the syringe. “You know? I’ve prioritised you for so long, and now you can prioritise me. This is going to be exciting! Come on, Max, with this uninhibited access to you, I can do so much more! This is going to produce ground-breaking results!”

“Let me go!” Max wrenched against the straps, to absolutely no avail. He couldn’t tell what the syringe had done, but he was panicked beyond rationality at this point. All he could focus on was being trapped, being exposed. “Let me go!”

“Well, you’ll come round.” Liz sounded unconcerned. “Besides, I’m not even hurting you – yet.” She punctuated that with a grin that made Max feel sick to his stomach.

His pleas fell on deaf ears. He begged Liz to call someone – anyone, at this point – but she refused, blithely saying that this was good alone time for them, time for them to really get to know each other inside and out. She was drawing some of his blood as she said that, and laughed like it was a funny joke between them.

After a few minutes of him beginning to really panic and starting to shout, Liz gagged him with a wad of material tied to a sort of bit that went between his teeth, fastened tight around the back of his neck and pulling uncomfortably at the corners of his mouth. She seemed to brighten up even more now he wasn’t bringing the mood down with his desperate demands to be let go, and babbled on about the advances she would be able to make now she had him like this.

“I have so many theories about your spinal fluid, and your bone marrow,” she said excitedly. “And about your healing abilities, and your brain. I’m sure I can get access to an MRI machine somehow, and just think of the possibilities there! I know,” she laughed, catching his eye. “I’m getting way ahead of myself. You know what I’m like – my brain just goes too fast sometimes. Though actually, I guess you don’t really know what that’s like at all.” She shrugged ruefully. 

She went away for a little bit, then returned with a drip stand she set up. “Gotta keep those fluids up,” she said cheerfully. “I want you alive as long as possible. Live specimens yield such better results.”

Max hyperventilated through his gag and reached out over and over for Isobel, hammering desperately against the block in his mind for someone who would come and rescue him. Liz hooked him up to the drip and muttered under her breath in Spanish as she went over her notes, occasionally making an adjustment with a pen she kept tucking into the top pocket of her lab coat.

“You know I’ve always wondered about teeth?” she said absently. “When you heal someone, I mean. You’re obviously regrowing other organic material, making it heal itself requires growth, so would you be able to regrow someone’s teeth? There’s no reason why not.”

Max made a weak, muffled sound into the gag, and Liz giggled.

“I kinda like this,” she said conspiratorially, glancing up from her notes. “You’re an ideal conversation partner right now, y’know? Perfect for bouncing my ideas off of.” She clicked her pen and put it back in her pocket, then bent down to get a vial of some other drug from the bottom shelf of the trolley. “I’m so glad I have the chance to do these tests now,” she murmured, getting a new syringe from a plastic packet to draw some of whatever the drug was. “It’s been so frustrating, knowing how much I could’ve been doing if you’d just let me. I’m glad we’re past that, now.”

She put the syringe down on the trolley and went to change the bag of fluid on the drip stand, checking that it was going into Max’s body properly before going back to get the syringe. Max struggled uselessly again as she came over, and she didn’t even look at his face as she injected him with whatever it was. “Stop squirming,” she scolded. “You’ll only give yourself bruises.”

Max shouted through the gag, and Liz rolled her eyes, smiling as though it was lightly amusing. “Your funeral,” she said. “But seriously, don’t be such a baby. It’s just a general anaesthetic.”

If it was, it wasn’t working very fast. But as Liz withdrew the syringe and turned to dump it in a sharps container, Max realised that his struggles were weakening. He shouted into the gag again, but even that was quieter – his body just wasn’t responding properly. He panted, feeling even more helpless as his body turned heavy and limp, his ability to control it almost completely gone. 

“Huh.” Liz leaned over to look at him. Her hair fell against his chest, and he made a quiet noise of protest, a horrible numbness keeping him still. “Are you still awake?”

“Mmmmmm. Mmmm!” He sounded pathetic to his own ears, but Liz just narrowed her eyes in interest. 

“Hm. Well, it makes sense – the percentage of humans who don’t respond exactly as they should to a general anaesthetic isn’t high, but it still exists. Ugh, I should’ve thought to test this first, but…well, we can do that later.” She smiled, so pretty and sweet. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Max tried to scream as she removed his restraints, but he could only make a thin whining sound, muffled by the gag. Even when he’d been trapped in his dying mindscape, he’d been able to reach out sporadically to Rosa, and later to Isobel. Now, he had nothing. He was completely alone, and there was nothing he could do as Liz dragged and pushed and pulled at his body until he was lying on his stomach, the back of his surgical gown open, his body horribly exposed.

He wished he’d gone under the way he should have. Unconsciousness was vastly preferable to this, to the way it just _kept going_. In a book, this sort of experience would have been skipped over in a few paragraphs. On TV, perhaps a fade to black, or a montage. It felt like a sort of divine cruelty that he had to be awake to experience this as it happened, second by second, minute by minute. That he had to listen to Liz’s cheery, excited tones as she prepared a huge needle and told him how much she would be able to do with his bone marrow, and particularly with his stem cells.

“If your ability to heal is something in your biology,” she said, in what he thought of as her science-explaining voice, all barely-restrained enthusiasm and earnestness, “I can isolate it from here, I’m sure of it. I know you never really understood my research, but trust me, Max, this is something I’m an expert in. That said,” she added, sounding amused, “I’ve never extracted bone marrow from a human before, so stay still.” She snorted with laughter and Max’s eyes blurred with tears as she moved out of view.

He supposed it was a mercy that he couldn’t feel the pain of what she was doing. He could feel everything else though. Something making a cut – he guessed a scalpel, but he couldn’t move his head to look. The first needle, thin and long. The second, bigger and thicker, puncturing his skin above the swell of his ass, pushing in, cold and invasive, pushing in, pushing in. It should have hurt, and the way it didn’t felt deeply wrong. He shouldn’t have been awake for this, he was sweating and making stupid, animal noises of fear that Liz ignored.

She tsked when she turned him laboriously onto his back again and his tears rolled from the corners of his eyes instead of falling onto the floor. “Just focus on the positives,” she said, completely serious. “You’re going to help more people as my subject than you ever helped as a cop, and that’s a fact.”

Max exhaled as loudly as he could, but it was harder to make actual sounds on his back than it had been on his stomach. And it wasn’t like Liz cared. She smirked like she found it funny, and shook her head as she turned away to do something with the blood and marrow she’d taken from him. Max watched her, throat thick and tears rolling cold down the sides of his face and into his ears, pooling there unpleasantly. 

“Iiiii,” he breathed. He couldn’t move his tongue to form an ‘l’ or a ‘z’, but he could manage the vowel at the centre of her name. “Iiiiii. Eeeeee.” _Liz, please._

“Stop that,” she warned without turning around. “I know you don’t appreciate my work, but you could at least not disturb me.”

“Iiiiiii! Eeeeee, iiiiii.”

Liz sighed and muttered something in Spanish – he caught _why, you_ and like, he thought, but wished for approximately the millionth time that he was better at languages. It was a thought he was used to being accompanied by a low-grade yearning, of wanting to be better at Spanish for Liz’s sake, of wishing he was properly conversant, of wanting to practice with her.

He just felt panicky now, knowing that she could be saying things he wouldn’t understand. Which wouldn’t be a huge change, since when she was speaking in science he didn’t really understand her then either, but it was just another helplessness on top of everything else, and he couldn’t get a full breath in without it shaking his whole chest.

She put the gag in his mouth again, giving him a matter-of-fact look that said very plainly that she wouldn’t have to do this if he wasn’t being so annoying. And then she went back to her work, leaving him on the table with only the occasional glance in his direction, talking out loud to herself and sometimes to him as she practically bounced around the theatre, doing God knew what with his bodily fluids.

He regained feeling in his extremities first, and then slowly the rest of his body. His back ached, sore and bruised from whatever she’d done. He twisted and tugged at his restraints as much as he could as soon as he was able, knowing it was pointless but not able to stop himself.

Chained down. Liz’s restraints were nylon straps, but he swore he could feel metal around his ankles and wrists, and he closed his eyes and tried not to start crying again, his heart beginning to race. 

Liz began to talk excitedly about the regenerative properties of his body, and how she’d been able to improve Noah’s heart, and then the pig hearts she’d experimented on later. Lots of long words he didn’t understand, processes he didn’t know, everything he’d always just thought of as ‘Liz’s science’. All in the same tone she’d used back in high school, and then later when she’d told him about the antidote for Isobel that she’d worked on with Michael. And later, when she’d talked about the work she’d done before she’d come back to Roswell. Later still, when she’d been so sure that he would soften and understand if she just explained her transgressions in the right way.

She hummed under her breath and made quiet noises of thought or triumph as she worked, and came over to swap his drip out with something new bag of liquid. “If I could administer this as a formula,” she said, following some train of thought Max wasn’t privy to. “The regrowth potential is huge, like something out of science fiction.” 

Max’s skin was beginning to get raw from all the pulling against the straps, but he couldn’t stop himself, especially when Liz was closer like this, muttering about polymer chains and superheating and application methods and extraction procedures. Synthesising his DNA, stripping him down for parts, patenting his biology for the use of the human race. Netting herself a Nobel Prize in the process too, if she could manage it.

He’d appreciated her ambition, once. He’d admired it. Now he was back to grunting through his gag, trying to beg her to stop as she cut down the front of his papery gown to expose his chest so she could attach wires to it. He shook his head frantically as she returned to his side with a scalpel and an indulgent smile. “It’ll be fun,” she said, and grinned. “Or it will be for me, anyway. Stop twisting about, you’re not going anywhere.”

She cut into his arm. His right arm, up near his shoulder, just below the strap that was pulling at his underarm hair. He could feel his body now – he could feel the blade going in, he could see Liz’s serene expression and the sudden welling-up of bright blood under her blue-gloved fingers.

He screamed – he couldn’t help it. He shouted and jerked in his restraints like a fish on dry land, and started to hyperventilate in sheer panic when Liz didn’t react beyond a snort. 

Somehow, through everything before that point, Max had managed to still see her as his Liz, the Liz he knew and had always loved. A scientist, sure, driven to find the _why_ behind everything, but always kind, always compassionate. Still the same Liz who slouched around in pyjama shorts with tangled hair, the same Liz who cupped his face and kissed him so sweetly. 

Max bellowed through the gag and slammed his head backwards into the table, and all it did was get him an annoyed sound from Liz. “You’re so dramatic sometimes,” she huffed. “It’s just a little cut!” She put her scalpel aside and went to the table against the wall closest to Max’s feet, and came back with another long strap of material. 

Up close, he could see it was like a seatbelt, only a little thinner. Still too strong for him to have any chance of breaking free from. He expected her to lay it over his forehead, but she slid it through the back of the gag strap instead before cinching it under the table, pulling even harder at the corners of his mouth. So he could still just about move his head from side to side, but he couldn’t lift it at all, not without hurting himself.

The others had to be looking for them, surely. Unless Liz had thrown them off the scent somehow, left a note or a message for someone saying they were going out of town on a spontaneous getaway. But Isobel would be able to feel his absence, Max was sure of it. He just had to outlast this. He could survive it.

As long as it didn’t go on for too long. As long as Liz didn’t start cutting bits of him off, or cutting him up, or playing around with his brain. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was capable of. He never had been, not really. Even as high school lab partners, she’d run rings around him, her abilities and understanding of the subject so far beyond his that he’d never made any real effort to keep up. He didn’t have her gifts, and he knew that – there was no point in a toad pretending it was an eagle. He was content to watch her fly.

She put butterfly stitches on his arm after cleaning up the blood, and checked the electrodes on his chest. And then fiddled with the machine they were hooked up to, and Max jolted in sudden pain as a shock of electricity went through him. “Hhhhhrrr!”

“Just checking,” Liz said mildly, grabbing her notebook and writing something down. “It’s a shame you’re not as into this,” she said, not looking at him. “I know you’re probably freaking out about all this, but you just have to think – this is so _refreshing_ for me, to finally let myself do this. I’m always thinking about it, you know? And I know exactly what you’d say.” She finally looked at him, her lips a little twisted. “You’d say this isn’t me, or I’m out of my mind, or whatever. Sometimes I wonder if you ever really know anyone, and if you ever really knew me.”

Max made a weak, protesting sound, and Liz sighed, a little condescending.

“I was never the girl you made me out to be, Max. I want to crack you open and find out all your secrets, things about you that _you_ never even tried to figure out. And if that means cutting you up, well, sometimes you have to break an egg to make an omelette.” She laughed at her own joke and flipped her notebook shut. “Now don’t move, okay? This’ll hurt you more than it’ll hurt me.” So wry and amused he almost didn’t see her reach for the machine again.

Max tried not to shout, but it was impossible. And he’d read that shouting and swearing could relieve pain, or at least distract from pain, so in a way it was just self-preservation to let it all out while Liz danced around him with that fascinated smile on her face, ignoring the way his eyes watered and his body twitched on the table.

“Check this out though,” she grinned, coming round to his side and prodding the cut she’d made.

Which was no longer there.

Max’s mouth hurt so much he hadn’t even noticed, and he made a confused sound as he looked at the butterfly stitches on his upper arm, each one stained in the middle with blood from a cut that had healed up. There wasn’t even a scar.

“No need for a handprint either.” Liz was practically bouncing, she was so triumphant. “I’ve had this theory for literally _months,_ maybe years at this point. Over a year, for sure. And I knew you’d never let me actually try it out, but that’s why this is so good! Max, this is perfect – I can just keep going, and it won’t even matter. You’re a perfectly regenerating specimen! The actual dream subject!”

It was so far beyond a nightmare for Max that he couldn’t even react. He just closed his eyes, trying not to cry again and hoping it would all be over soon.

He lost consciousness twice before he was actually rescued. Once because Liz put him under again for some procedure she explained out loud but he still didn’t understand, and once because she left him to get some sleep of her own. She’d only just come back, notebook at the ready, raring to start all over again when the lights flickered.

She looked up with a frown, then went completely still. Max watched, mouth still sore as hell from the gag, though Liz had at least taken it out before she’d left last night. If it had been night – there was no way for Max to measure the passing of time here, or even guess.

“No,” she breathed after a few long seconds, and for a second Max was sure he heard footsteps. But then Liz was on him, her expression stricken, scrabbling at his restraints. “Oh God – Max, oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean –”

The door flew open and Liz was dragged backwards by an invisible force – telekinesis. And in the doorway, Michael, Isobel right behind him. She ran to him at once while Michael stepped between them and Liz, his powers obviously the ones holding her in place.

Max couldn’t say anything, could hardly breathe as Isobel got him out of the restraints and sitting up on the table, her fury radiating off her in waves he could see in her face, if not feel in his head. “Michael,” she said in a tight voice. “Give me your jacket, and get her out of here.”

“You got it.” Michael shrugged off his jacket without looking around and passed it backwards for Isobel to take. Max bunched the sad remains of his surgical gown around his waist, covering most of his thighs. “Let’s go, Liz.”

She was crying. Max couldn’t look. He didn’t want to hear her. He was cold, and the world around him seemed to be buzzing slightly. Isobel took his face in her hands as soon as Michael and Liz were out the door, tears springing to her eyes. “Max.”

He swallowed. “Iz.”

She breathed out slowly, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders in a tight hug he could barely return, the movement tugging unpleasantly at the tube still in his arm. He must have shown it somehow, made a small noise of pain or something, because Isobel drew back at once and glared down at the tube before getting her phone out of her pocket. 

“Valenti? Yeah, get in here. I don’t know how to do this medical stuff.”

“What happened?” Max managed, starting to shiver as Isobel hung up without another word and draped Michael’s still-warm jacket around his shoulders. “I don’t…what’s wrong with Liz?”

“Something alien, we think. We don’t know yet, I don’t care till we get you out of here.” Isobel ran a hand through his hair. “I got in her brain just now – it was weird. I’ll figure it out later, right now I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Max was shaking now, and he felt horribly close to tears again. “I don’t think I am.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be either if I was kept as a science experiment for two days.” Isobel looked over her shoulder as footsteps sounded in the hall, and then Kyle ran in. “Quick, get this stuff out of him.”

Kyle nodded and stepped up to Isobel’s side, catching Max’s eye first. “You okay for me to take this out?”

Max thrust his arm at him weakly, and Kyle took that as the permission it was, taking a little emergency kit of doctor stuff out of his coat pocket and getting to work. “You hurt anywhere right now?” he asked quietly, while Isobel kept her hand on the back of Max’s head, a reassuring presence.

“My back.” Max swallowed, closing his eyes. “My mouth. My neck. My – she, I’ve got…I’ve got a catheter in right now.”

Isobel made a horrified sound and drew back to look at the tube trailing out from between Max’s legs.

“I can get that out,” Kyle said, not even sounding phased. “Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“How’re you feeling physically? Is your vision okay? Your head hurt at all?”

A slow litany of questions that pushed down the weird buzzing as he answered as best he could, he and Isobel both looking away as Kyle removed the catheter. Max held onto Isobel’s arms so tightly he was sure she’d bruise, but she gripped him back just as hard. “Can you walk?” she asked, as she and Kyle helped Max stand up off the table. “The car’s just outside. Not even five minutes from here.”

“I can walk,” Max said, not entirely sure if he was being truthful or not. The only way to find out was to try it.

He made it, barely. He couldn’t tell exactly where they were – it looked almost like a disused school, the floor dirty and the air stale, the walls and doors damaged by time and neglect. As they left, he could hear Liz crying from somewhere behind them, and wished he could close his ears like he could close his eyes, leaning on Isobel and Kyle and letting them help him outside into what turned out to be night time.

They got him into Isobel’s car, and he drifted half in and out of sleep as they drove back. Kyle gave him his socks to keep his feet warm, and kept checking his pulse. They needed to pull over briefly while Max leaned out of the open door and heaved, even though there didn’t seem to be anything in his stomach to throw up. It felt like hours before they got back to his house, and they helped him inside and got him into bed. Kyle left, promising to come back in the morning, and Isobel stayed. She lay next to him in bed, curled on her side with her hand on his shoulder, her fingers wound tight into the fabric of his shirt like she was determined to keep hold of him from now on.

Whatever Liz had given him to suppress his powers wore off the next morning, to Isobel’s visible and loud relief. Max was still pretty groggy, and ate the oatmeal she made for him (like their mom had made for both of them when they were kids) before falling back to sleep. When he woke up, Isobel was gone, but Michael was there instead, sitting on a chair he’d dragged in with a frown on his face. One ankle was crossed over his opposite knee, and he had a notebook balanced on it, pen scribbling away.

It reminded Max of Liz, and he pushed himself slowly to sitting. 

Michael looked up at once, expression going slack with relief. “Max. You okay?”

“Define ‘okay’.” Max rubbed his hands over his face, grimacing. “I need a shower.”

“Probably,” Michael agreed. “You good to get there, or you want help?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Michael stayed where he was as Max levered himself up onto his feet and shuffled into his bathroom, trying very hard not to think about everything that had happened to him over the last…seventy-two hours, or however long it had been. He wasn’t entirely successful, but he didn’t have a breakdown in the shower, which he was going to take as a victory.

Michael was in the front room when Max came out, clean and dressed. “So what the hell happened?” he asked, before Michael could ask him how he was. “What made Liz…do that?”

“Something alien.” Michael leaned against the side of the couch, watching him. “I don’t know what yet – that’s what Isobel’s gone to find out. She said something when I saw her about…I don’t know, inhibitions and impulses?”

Something dark and trembling went through Max’s stomach. “You’re saying that was Liz with no inhibitions?”

“No.” Michael frowned. “No. I think it was like there was something pushing Liz to act on her worst impulses, with her inhibitions so suppressed she couldn’t fight back. She wants to see you,” he added quietly, and Max shook his head before he even knew he was doing it.

“I can’t.” He swallowed. “I can’t.”

Michael nodded. “Alright.”

“She.” Max backed up against the kitchen bar, blinking quickly. “She said she’d always wanted to do it. Cut me up and…take me apart, she called me a _subject,_ Michael. A perfect specimen.”

“Yeah.” Michael sighed. “I saw the stuff she did.”

“She took my _bone marrow!_ ”

“I know.” Michael took a breath. “It’s gone. All of it, everything she took, all her results, they’ve been destroyed.”

Max could see her smiling in his head, wide and excited, and an awful sneer pulled at his lips. “Bet she hated that.”

“No, actually. She wanted to. Soon as she realised what she’d done.”

But Max knew now, that somewhere in her, maybe deep down but still _there,_ there was a part of Liz that had burned at having to destroy her work. Ill-gotten though it may have been, dragged out of him by force, there had still been a part of her that had wanted to do those things to him. 

There was some part of him that guessed that this had been the purpose of whatever had done this to Liz. Pushing them apart, forcing him away from his anchor, from the human he loved more than anyone else in the world. He wanted to apply some sort of logic to it and tell himself that they could move past it because Liz had been under some kind of malevolent influence.

But his back still ached from where she’d driven a needle into his pelvis. His mouth was still sore at the corners from the gag. She’d listened to him scream and she’d laughed. How could he move past that?

“Isobel’s gonna find out what happened?” he asked finally, and Michael nodded. Max turned away and went into the kitchen properly, though he didn’t feel truly hungry. “Okay.”

“We’ll fix it,” Michael said from behind him. “Whatever happened, we’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Max stared at his countertop, swaying a little on his feet. Isobel couldn’t fix Liz – something like Liz’s drive to discover and dissect couldn’t be fixed. It was just who she was. 

But wasn’t Max a murderer? Without any inhibitions, giving into his worse impulses, wasn’t he vindictive and cruel, and possessive, and self-righteous to the point of inflicting his will on others in terrible ways?

Liz was a good person. Even at her worst, even when she’d been torturing Max and making him beg for mercy, one of her end goals had been to use her knowledge for the benefit of her species. 

Max leaned against the counter and closed his eyes. He couldn’t move past it yet, but whatever had done this didn’t know them as well as it probably thought. He knew Liz wasn’t a perfect person with pure motives all the time, but she knew the same about him. He couldn’t forgive her yet, but he knew he would. When his world was a storm, she was his safe harbour. It would just be a matter of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr!](https://myrmidryad.tumblr.com/)


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